Room air conditioners generally have an air inlet and an air outlet at a front side of the air conditioner which faces the interior of the room when the air conditioner is placed in a window opening or in a through-the-wall sleeve. Usually warm air is drawn in through a portion of the front grill to pass through a filter and through the evaporator coil to be cooled and then is directed by a blower or a fan to an outlet also in the front grill.
Prior art air conditioners have included a variety of sheet metal and plastic wall sections for defining the air flow path through such an air conditioner. Also, it is known to use a foamed insulation material to define a portion of the air passage within the air conditioner. U.S. Pat. No. 5,085,057 is representative of such prior arrangements.
Due to the complexity and the number of parts associated with a room air conditioner, assembly of such a device often times includes complicated and time intensive assembly steps and requires intricate manipulation of parts and tools. Such a process results in an increased cost of the room air conditioner due to increased manufacturing costs. Accordingly, it is desirable to design and fabricate components for a window room air conditioner which are as simple as possible and which perform as many functions as possible within the air conditioner while requiring a minimum of cost and labor to install.